Beleaguered blood diagnostics startup Theranos has reached a settlement with hedge fund management firm Partner Fund Management. Terms of the settlement are confidential, but PFM had sought to recoup its investment in the case and was also asking for damages. Read More
Between Thumbtack, Yelp, Angie’s List and Amazon, it wouldn’t appear that the world needs a new platform that matches customers with service professionals. That’s not the way Julio Vasconcellos sees it, clearly. Vasconcellos has spent the last year-plus working on a services platform called Prefer. Read More
The graphical fidelity of games these days is truly astounding, but one thing their creators struggle to portray is the variety and fluidity of human motion. An animation system powered by a neural network drawing from real motion-captured data may help make our avatars walk, run and jump a little more naturally. Read More
Facebook wants to prove it drives brick-and-mortar foot traffic with its latest feature test. TechCrunch has discovered a previously unreported Facebook feature where users can scan a personalized QR code to score discounts or bonuses when they buy something in-person at certain shops. Read More
Airbnb Head of Global Policy Chris Lehane announced today that the company has settled its lawsuit with the city of San Francisco. Last year, Airbnb sued San Francisco over the city’s new rental legislation. Read More
Just ahead of the launch of Hulu’s forthcoming live TV service, the company today announced a new deal with NBCUniversal that will bring NBC and Telemundo-owned television stations to the new service. The agreement greatly expands Hulu’s live TV lineup with the addition of top networks, including NBC, Telemundo, USA, Syfy, Bravo, E!, MSNBC, CNBC, NBCSN, Sprout and others. Read More
Yahoo Finance has nabbed a couple of photos reported to show Fitbit’s upcoming smartwatch, along with a handful of reports that make the whole undertaking sound like one big fiasco. Sources are talking complaints about design, production delays, antenna issues and software problems. Read More
Until now, Pepper the robot has required programming knowledge to control, a fact that’s proven a pain point toward wider adoption (well, that and the fact that it hasn’t started shipping widely here in the U.S.). This morning, the company debuted Promoter, a browser-based solution that lets anyone customize the robot’s movements — albeit within a fairly limited scope. Read More
The desire to create is a hard one to kill. I’ve had it all my life, from the comic books and music I made with my grade school friend Rick to the books I wrote and tried to write to the projects I built over the years. Now it’s become easier and, in a way, harder, to make something meaningful online, so after shutting down one startup last year, I’ve decided to work on… Read More
Gentry Underwood is the co-founder of Mailbox. In our 12th episode, we talk on design being a “we” vs an “I” issue, how to be your most productive self, and discuss what it took to turn Mailbox into a $100 million acquisition within 30 days of being launched. Design doesn’t have to be approached as a “we,” according to Underwood. However, when… Read More
Samsung is working on self-driving cars — which shouldn’t surprise you if you know the company’s history and wide range of interests. What’s new, however, is that Samsung is the latest company to receive approval from the South Korean government to begin testing its self-driving tech on public roads in the country. Read More
Someone in the U.S. has a stroke every 40 seconds; it is the third leading cause of death and leaves hundreds of thousands more with long-term disabilities. One of the reasons strokes are so deadly and debilitating is that they’re hard to diagnose, and time is of the essence when the occur. One startup thinks it has found a solution, harnessing the power of artificial intelligence. Read More
Self-driving cars in Canada have a new designated test site in the province of Ontario: Stratford, which is also home to the annual Stratford Festival, an event celebrating Shakespearean and other stage plays. Autonomous-vehicle testing in Stratford will provide a focal point for development done across six technology centers located at different points around the province. Read More
PayPal today launched a new service called Business in Box aimed at bringing more U.S. small business owners to its payments platform. The service offers merchants a suite of tools for running their online businesses, including an online storefront, accounting tools, the ability to apply for working capital from PayPal and support for taking payments either online or offline, via PayPal. Read More
In this episode of Technotopia I talk to Greg Mark, founder of Markforged. Mark recently made news with his new metal printing technology that heats metallic objects in a microwave, reducing by hours the time it takes to make metal parts. He believes that 3D printing is the future, but not in the low-quality, stringy and plasticky way we expect. Mark said that rapid prototyping has gotten… Read More
Jive, a community collaboration software company that was one of the biggest Enterprise 2.0-era success stories, going public in 2011, announced today it had agreed to be acquired by ESW Capital’s Wave Systems for $462 million. It will become part of the Aurea family of companies. Read More
MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab has figured out a way to measure walking speed to within 95 and 99 percent accuracy — all without requiring a wearable or other on-body measurement device. The tech uses wireless signals, dubbed “WiGait” by the research team, sent out by router-like devices within the home to track walking speed and stride length… Read More
Verizon has invested in self-driving software startup Renovo, which wants to become an autonomous operating system provider to leading automakers and fleet operators. The investment comes as part of a new $10 million round led by True Ventures, The Wall Street Journal reports, and boosts the total funding raised by the company to $14.5 million across two rounds. Read More
SpaceX recovered its Falcon 9 first-stage rocket after succeeding in launching NROL-76 for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Organization today. The recovery attempt saw the first-stage rocket fall back to earth under a controlled descent after separating from the second stage and mission payload a few minutes after launch. Read More
SpaceX succeeded in its second attempt to launch NROL-76, a classified payload and its first big contract for the U.S. military via the National Reconnaissance Organization (the NRO). While SpaceX couldn’t reveal what the rocket was taking to orbit, it still broadcast the rocket taking off from is LC-39A facility at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Read More
